MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina to mark 2 April on April Fool's Day

The argentine government announced that the official April 2 Veterans Day holiday will be moved forward by a day and celebrated on Monday April 1st instead.

The announcement was made by Tourism Under-secretary Daniel Scioli after holding conversations with other members of the government, representatives of the tourism industry and veterans organisations.

In making this announcement Scioli explained, "The holiday has been moved to the Monday. This does not mean that, more than ever, we do not vindicate the Malvinas campaign. By doing this we hope to confirm the view that we are committed to ensure that promoting tourism is a state policy".

Under current legislation national holidays falling on Tuesdays or Wednesdays are moved to the preceding Monday and those which fall on Thursday are moved to the Friday as a way of avoiding sandwiching working days between weekends and holidays.

Despite the fact that this year the April 2 holiday marks the 20th anniversary of the day Argentine forces took the Falkland Islands two decades ago and the fact that it is on the Tuesday after Easter - which would have meant an extra long weekend stretching from Good Thursday to April 2 with a working day, Monday April 1, sandwiched in the middle - the government decided to move it forward despite protests from local tourist operators and the associations of Malvinas war veterans.

Several veterans' organisations are still planning to hold a rally in the southern city of Ushuaia to mark the anniversary.

Travel agents who are struggling for survival after a mediocre summer season were hoping to make the most of the long weekend and claim that many bookings have been lost as a result of cutting back go the holiday by a day.

Veterans consulted by MercoPress expressed differing views on this decision, some saying that the government was continuing the policy of ignoring the veterans who took part in the 1982 war, while others said they understood the reasons adding that the significance of Veteran's Day will be remembered anyhow despite the fact that April 2 is not a national holiday.

Since taking office earlier this year the government of Eduardo Duhalde has tried handle its relations with Britain over the Malvinas in a low keyed fashion, returning the policies carried out by the government of Carlos Menem and Foreign Minister Guido